Is Mayor Belen ready to file cases?
By Leonardo Micua
IT may bode well for Dagupan that the League of Cities of the Philippines took cognizance of the fact that Dagupan City is still without an annual budget, the only one in the entire archipelago operating on a measly reenacted budget, a budget never sufficient to serve the city’s needs.
Sympathizing with the city of Dagupan, the LCP executive board led by Cebu City Mayor Mike Rama, endorsed the case of Dagupan that’s long been denied of its submitted annual budget by the seven-man majority in the Sanggunian Panlungsod, to the Department of the Interior and Local Government for whatever intervention it can make.
The league even took one step further by setting up a one-on-one meeting between Mayor Belen Fernandez and DILG Secretary Benhur Abalos. And it happened last week at the DILG central office.
It was yet the second meeting between Mayor Belen and the good DILG secretary, who was already in Dagupan on April 30 for the launching of the BIDA Fund Run to support the continuing campaign of the government against illegal drugs, and did the ceremonial lighting of the Kalutan ed Dalan of the Dagupan Bangus Festival.
“Salamat at nagkita kami uli,” Mayor Belen only muttered when asked by the press as to how her conversation with Secretary Abalos went.
Mayor Belen did not reply directly to the question and simply said that she already consulted her lawyers on the matter.
Which brings us to the question, has Mayor Belen finally come to her senses and is finally preparing to sue her detractors before the Ombudsman as many had long suggested to her?
Based on her cryptic answer to the question, Mayor Belen may have, indeed, finally made up her mind to make the majority seven accountable for maliciously holding the annual budget hostage for too long to sabotage her administration.
The majority’s refusal to approve her annual budget not only hindered the growth of Dagupan, but prevented city hall employees from receiving their salary increases, retired employees from getting their benefits under the law.
While she did not say it, the filing of cases may have been the advice of Secretary Abalos in their one-on-one meeting. However, knowing Mayor Belen, she remains to be evasive on the matter, and as usual, wants to keep her cards close to her chest.
But her mention of consulting her private lawyers was a hint on what direction she will take to finally secure the city’s annual budget.
If, indeed true that Secretary Abalos encouraged her to file cases, the DILG’s policy is not to tolerate the actions like those of the majority in the Sanggunian that throws its weight around simply because it had the number.
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Mayor Belen Fernandez hit the nail straight right on the head when she revealed that the possible cause of oft-repeated tidal floods in Dagupan is the fact that the outlets of the old city’s antiquated drainage systems is lower than the level of water in every river where run-off water from the rains are being discharged.
This, she said, was the reason why during the rainy season and even without rains, tidal floods occur on major roads and on some of the business districts of Dagupan.
That is why, she asked the DPWH to make the outlets of every drainage systems disgorging run-off water into the rivers higher to prevent flooding since some of the roads in the city are already elevated.
During high tide, the water practically back flows through the drainage canals even when it’s not raining.
During the first meeting of the new Flood Mitigation Commission, Mayor Belen showed a video footage of an outlet of a drainage system at the Pantal River, which is lower than the water line.
Mayor Belen is confident that DPWH will no longer commit the same mistake in the past – constructing drainage systems which outlets are lower than the level of water in the river.
Meanwhile, she defended the elevation of roads and construction of bigger drainage systems, that these are the real answers to the city’s flooding problem and not pumping stations which the past Flood Mitigation Commission had recommended.
She dismissed as insane the suggestion of one of the lady majority councilors that a pumping station be constructed in front of the Sanitary Bakery, the area on A.B. Fernandez Avenue whose elevation is said to be the lowest, that will pump out floodwater to the Pantal River, some 100 meters away!
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